


Stories of Darkness

by Bmxtthxw



Category: The Grinning Man - Philips & Teitler/Grose & Morris & Philips & Teitler/Grose
Genre: Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25680037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bmxtthxw/pseuds/Bmxtthxw
Summary: “How long do we have to be friends before I can ask how your hand ended up like that?”For all Osric liked David, he really did pick his moments.
Relationships: Lord David Dirry-Moir/Osric
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Stories of Darkness

“How long do we have to be friends before I can ask how your hand ended up like that?”

By this point, Osric was used to David’s less than sensitive questions. Coming from anyone else, he would’ve already told them to screw off and stopped speaking to them, but with David, it wasn’t too hard for him to tell that he never meant any actual harm. He was just curious and never was taught not to ask things like that. And he was cute, he did have that going for him.

“Do you want the true answer or the show answer?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Of course there’s a difference. No one at the fair tells the actual story of how they ended up the way they are. You really think Dea went blind just looking at Grinpayne?” Osric laughed at the silence that followed. “She was just born that way, far as we know. So were a lot of the folks here, but people don’t come to a fair for that. They come to laugh at misery, so we make things up.” Neither one wanted to comment on how vaguely cruel that sounded.

“So your hand was always like that?”

“Never said that.”

“But you said that your lot makes things up, that you were all just born like-”   
  


“No, you weren’t listening. I said that a lot of us were, not all. We do make things up because people like your lot,” Osric said, clearly emphasising the ‘your lot’ as a way to pick on David. For as much as he hung around, he did seem to struggle to pick up on the fact that he had a habit of saying rather rude things, “don’t like hearing about the properly sad shit. No, they want misery, not sadness.”

David, for his credit, managed to avoid adding anymore offense to his words. “Do I get to hear the misery story or the sad one?”

“The sad one isn’t nearly as interesting as the misery story.” 

“I don’t care. It’s your story.” Osric paused for a moment, looking up at David with just a hint of a smile. For all the offense he was good at causing, he made it hard to forget he did actually care.

“I used to work in a factory. They never pay much attention to the workers in those places, and I always was telling stories, a distraction from boredom, even if I was the only one listening. The other kids liked having something to hear that wasn’t the machin-“

“Hold on,” he put a hand against Osric’s to stop him, “I’m sorry, did you say other kids? As in, you were a kid? Working in a factory?”

“Not all of us can be lords, David. Some of us have- had families with too many mouths to feed. You head down to the other side of town, it’s easy to see-”

“So you send kids to work?”

“Are you gonna keep interruptin’ or are you gonna let me tell the story you asked for?”

“Right, sorry, no more words from me, onward with the story, I’ll be quiet as a mouse-” Osric raised a brow at him and the rambling stopped as David instead held onto Osric’s hand like that would protect it from the harm that made the story.

“Right. Anyway. The others liked hearing something other than machinery, even if it meant they had to hear whatever stories I made up back then. Problem with that is eventually you only pay attention to your stories and not to the machines.” There was a look on David’s face like he could already guess where the story would be going but he had promised not to interrupt and thus stayed quiet. “One day I leaned back, put my hand on something I shouldn’t’ve, and- well… I dunno for sure what all it screwed up but definitely broke a couple spots and it didn‘t grow quite right after that, and I couldn’t go back to the factory because you really couldn’t do much one handed there… Eventually figured out that people were much more willin’ to laugh at it than help it so I joined up with the fair.”

“Osric, that’s terrible…”

“It’s life outside a shining castle, Lord Dirry-Moir.” Osric wasn’t used to that sort of reaction to the actual story, wasn’t used to even getting a reaction to the actual story, but here David was, looking almost heartbroken. It wasn’t a look that he liked. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. It just makes this hand more decorative than useful and achy when the weather changes.”

The joking didn’t change the look on David’s face. If anything, the heartbreak only grew, the hand in question getting hugged tighter to David’s chest, a protectiveness over an event that could no longer be changed. 

“That’s terrible, even if you can joke about it now, Oz.” 

“It’s life, David. If I spent all my time thinkin’ about how terrible it is that my hand got fucked up ‘cause there ain’t enough doctors on that side of town to deal with all the kids who stick their hand in the wrong place, I’d never get anything done.”

“So you go about life as normal? Just pretend that it’s all fine?” If David didn’t look so upset at the situation, Osric might’ve laughed at him.

“Normal for me ain’t normal for you. This hand’s been like this since I was a kid, you get used to it. There are days that it hurts like hell and I can’t do shit,” David tried to drop his hold like he was afraid to be hurting him but Osric held on, didn’t let him let go, “and days I would love nothing more than to just fucking hide away from all the sneering bastards that come to the fair, days I want to go home to my old family, but those days don’t matter on the good ones. The good ones when it’s fun to make up a new story about what happened, when it’s you holding my hand, when nothing goes wrong and it’s easy to see the new family that never would’ve happened if I hadn’t accidentally stuck my hand into a press. It’s a shit life, David, but you gotta make some good out of it…”

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I love this pairing, there are no damn fics for it, I will fill this tag myself if I must. 
> 
> Also, yes the show doesn't seem to have a specific time period, I sorta went with the vague steampunk/industrial/Tim Burton vibe and decided that this is what happened to Osric's hand (For the actual reason that Osric would not have known, I personally think the broken hand situation broke a few growth plates in his hand, so while they did sort of heal, it was never quite right and obviously medicine at the time wouldn't have allowed it to heal the way it would in a modern day.) 
> 
> Find me at polaris-and-ink if you ever wanna shout about them


End file.
